A few days ago, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote, handed down a
school prayer ruling that is as perfidious as any decision it has ever
made. This ruling rivals the '62 and '63 Supreme Court decisions that
expelled prayer and Bible reading from our public schools. It might even
be worse, because it prohibits student-led prayers, something the court
had never before addressed.
It is more than interesting that the current court is a lopsided
Republican appointed court. The current Supreme Court is comprised of
seven Republican-appointed justices to only two Democrat appointed ones.
This fact created a curiosity that prompted me to review past Supreme
Court rulings. My discovery leads me to believe that there is little
difference between Democrat and Republican appointed Supreme Court
justices.
Consider the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision that legalized
abortion on demand. Republican appointed justices held a 6-3 majority on
that court. Yet, the vote was 7-2 in favor of Roe. (And one of the two
dissenting votes was cast by a Democrat appointed justice.) In the Roe
decision, Republican appointed justices voted 5-1 in support of
legalizing abortion.
Consider the two infamous cases in '62 and '63. The first, Engel v.
Vitale, resulted in voluntary prayer being removed from our public
schools. The second, Abington Township v. Schemp, removed Bible reading
from schools.
In 1962, Democrat-appointed justices held a 6-3 majority. The same
was true in 1963. The vote to remove prayer from schools in '62 was 6-1
(two members did not participate). The vote to remove Bible reading in
'63 was 8-1. Republican-appointed justices voted 2-1 to remove prayer
from school. Republican-appointed justices voted to remove Bible reading
from schools by the same margin.
No one can argue that each of these cases was a landmark case. Many
historians regard the cases in '62 and '63 and the one in '73 as the
worst court decisions since the Dred Scott case in 1857 that declared
Negroes to be mere chattel. This latest decision is no less egregious.
The point is this: Republicans insist that we must vote for their
presidential candidate in order to insure that liberal justices are not
appointed to the Supreme Court. Oh, really? The facts described above do
not support their argument. Even a 7-2 Republican majority hasn't turned
the tide. For the past four decades, the Supreme Court has continued to
take the nation down the path toward secularism, and it hasn't mattered
which party has had a majority of appointments.